A New Low-power, High-Q, Wide Tunable CMOS Active Inductor for RF Applications

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a new topology for realizing a single-ended inductor employing a minimum number of passive components. The active inductor achieves a high quality factor of 895 over a frequency range of 1700 MHz. Its self-resonance frequency is 5.5 GHz. The achieved range of sweep for inductance (L) varies from 3.55 to 26 nH. The circuit draws 0.5 mA current from 1.0-V supply and occupies an effective active area of 22 × 27.5 µm², while the noise voltage is less than . The proposed inductor is designed and simulated in a 90-nm TSMC MS/RF CMOS process.

KEYWORDS:

• Active inductor
• CMOS
• feedback resistor
• gyrator-C
• Q-factor
• RF communications

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sehmi Saad

Sehmi Saad was born in Versailles, France, in 1985. He received the B.E.E.T degree from the Higher Institute of Technological Study of Sousse in 2007; the BS degree from the Faculty of Sciences of Monastir in 2009; and the MS degree from the same university at the Microelectronics and Instrumentation Laboratory in 2011. At present, he is currently working towards the PhD degree. His research interests include mixed/analogue RF integrated circuits, wideband AD-PLL frequency synthesizers for multistandard communication systems.

E-mail: [email protected]

Mongia Mhiri

Mongia Mhiri received the BS degree in Physics from Faculty of Sciences, Monastir, in 1988, the MS degree in Computer Science from Grenoble University in 1989, and the PhD degree also in Computer Science from University Pierre & Marie Curie, Paris 6, in 1993. She is a professor in the Department of Physics at the Faculty of Sciences, Monastir. Her research interests are directed towards the modelling with neural networks and design of CMOS integrated circuits. At present, she is a member of the Microelectronics and Instrumentation Lab and she works on RF integrated circuits specially filters and frequency synthesizers.

E-mail: [email protected]

Aymen Ben Hammadi

Aymen Ben Hammadi was born in Kebili, Tunisia, in 1984. He received the BS degree from the Faculty of Sciences of Monastir in 2009, the MS degree from the same university at the Microelectronic and Instrumentation Laboratory in 2011. At present, he is preparing for the PhD degree. He is interested to the implementation of low-voltage low-power integrated circuit design. His research interests include filtering, radio frequency circuit, and multistandard wireless communications systems.

E-mail: [email protected]

Kamel Besbes

Kamel Besbes was born in 1960 in Monastir, Tunisia, received the MS degree from the Ecole Centrale de Lyon-France in 1986, the PhD degree from INSA Lyon, France, in 1989, and the “State Doctorate Degree” from Tunis University in 1995. In 1989, he joined Monastir University. He established teaching and research laboratories initiatives in microelectronics since 1990. Research efforts are focused on microelectronics devices, microsystems, detection and navigation Instruments, embedded systems for environment, and space programs. He has more than 140 published and presented papers at workshops and conferences. He participated to committees of several workshops and conferences as IC-Microelectronics and Smart-Systems and Devices. He is a full professor since 2002. He was the vice-dean (2000–2005), the dean of Sciences Faculty of Monastir (2008–2011), and member of the University Council (2005–2014). He is the head of the Microelectronics and Instrumentation Lab since 2003 and the general director of Research Center for Microelectronics and Nanotechnology in the Techno park of Sousse (Tunisia) since 2014.

E-mail: [email protected]